Today's Sports

Race organizers anticipate another large crowd this year for the 14th annual Cove Lake 5K on Father’s Day weekend.

The race is scheduled for 8 a.m. Saturday, June 16 at Cove Lake State Park.

Over 250 people either ran or walked the course last year when 26-year-old Knoxvillian Max Paquette beat his closest challenger by almost five seconds to win the Cove Lake 5K. ABSolute Fitness won the team title.

As the end of the regular season draws near for Campbell County Youth Baseball and Softball teams, there are a couple of hotly contested division championship races among the older age groups playing Dixie Youth Baseball.

The Fight for the Cure team currently holds down the top spot in the 11-12 division, but Po-Hos Ice Cream is running a close second. The Giants are ranked third, while the Marlins are fourth.

Campbell County High School’s football team wrapped up spring practice last week with a wealth of confidence heading into summer break.

With the season opener less than three months away, the Cougars are well ahead of where they were this time last year, when the team was transitioning between three different head coaches in a span of six months.

“As a staff, we entered spring with certain goals and expectations,” said Justin Price, who will be going into his second season as head coach at Campbell County.

Relay for Life benefit basketball games will be held Friday, June 1 at the LaFollette Recreation Center. Games will be played at 5, 6 and 7 p.m. The 7 p.m. game will feature the Campbell County Sheriff’s Department vs the Rescue Squad. Admission is $5. Concessions will be sold. All proceeds go to the American Cancer Society.

Former Campbell County High School baseball standout Ben Aiken is well on his way to fulfilling a lifelong dream of flying a jet fighter plane.

Aiken graduated yesterday (May 23) from the United States Air Force Academy and will leave in January for Columbus Air Force Base in Mississippi where he will begin training to become a pilot. The night before graduation, he got his lieutenant bars during a commissioning ceremony.

However, Trent Graves and his middle school classmates at the Christian Academy of Campbell County raised a couple hundred rainbow trout fingerlings this year in a project sponsored by the Clinch River Chapter of Trout Unlimited.

For nearly four months, the students nursed their finny friends in a 55-gallon aquarium in the classroom of math teacher Travis Dunn. On May 14, the trout were large enough (about 2 to 3 inches long) to release into Clear Creek, a tributary of the Clinch River in the Norris watershed.